The Lost Swarm

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Not Builders,” Galyan said slowly. “But something to do with Builders…? Yes, I think you are right, Valerie.”

  The lieutenant swore under her breath.

  “Do you think such a thing is bad?” asked Galyan.

  “Do you see all these missiles out there?”

  “Yes, Valerie, I see them.”

  “How many space mines are in the inner system?” Valerie asked Andros.

  “I’m still checking,” the Kai-Kaus said. “This will take some time.”

  “A city of pyramids,” Valerie said in Galyan’s direction. “Why didn’t you mention that before? Pyramids on a planet could mean more androids. Maybe that’s why Ludendorff—”

  “I have an approximate number,” Andros said, interrupting her. “Three billion—give or take several million.”

  “How could you count three billion so quickly?” Valerie asked.

  “It’s an estimate,” Andros said. “I divided the star system into parts and counted the number of space mines in one part. Then, I multiplied—”

  “I get the picture,” Valerie said, interrupting. “The inner system is packed with lurker missiles.”

  “Quite true,” Andros said.

  “Which could make it hard getting Maddox onto the second planet,” she said.

  “Not that hard,” Andros said. “We can star-drive jump there, launch a shuttle and leave via jump, bypassing the lurker missile belt. The shuttle lands on the planet and signals us when they’re ready to leave, and back we come to pick them up.”

  “I can see a number of ways that could go wrong,” Valerie said dryly.

  Andros spread his pudgy fingers and shrugged.

  Valerie drummed her fingers on an armrest the way she’d seen the captain do on occasion. “For all we know, the lurker missiles will rain down on the planetary surface.”

  “We can check to see if they’re programmed to do that,” Andros said. “If missiles have landed in the past, we should be able to tell. If they haven’t, they probably won’t now.”

  Valerie bit her lower lip. She did not like the word “probably.” They were talking about Maddox’s life. What was the correct decision? Hmm… The captain held meetings sometimes to help him. Did she have the right to call one? What if they held a meeting, said no go and Maddox still wanted to go down to the city of pyramids?

  “Keith, you have the bridge,” she said, standing, heading for the exit.

  “Where are you going?” Keith asked.

  She stopped and faced him. “I’m the acting captain,” she said. “That is therefore an inappropriate question.”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” Keith mumbled.

  Valerie nodded, and then pointed at Galyan. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Yes, Acting-Captain,” Galyan said. “I will be glad to.”

  -7-

  Sergeant Riker piloted the Darter Reynard. This was a bad idea, in a bad star system, to go down to a dubious location that the damned alien AI had computed for the captain.

  Yeah, normally Riker liked Galyan, but this mission stank to high heaven. It was the AI’s brainchild, and yet now the holoimage conveniently couldn’t go down with them. From what Riker had heard, and he had been kept out of the loop for much of this, Galyan had to leave with Victory due to billions—that’s right—billions of Orion-drive space lurker missiles. The missiles were supposed to be well over six thousand years old, and yet the nuclear fuel well enough to propel the lurker missiles at Victory. Galyan was part of the starship, so ipso facto, the AI was leaving when the captain needed him most.

  Riker grumbled to himself as he piloted the darter out of the hangar bay. Meta was in one of the darter rooms with Maddox. The captain slept most of the time these days. Meta had shaken him awake once to ask his permission to take him down onto the alien planet. Riker had been there as witness. It had taken the groggy Maddox almost a half hour to understand the question. When he was like this, how was Maddox supposed to view a sculpture and then do whatever would need doing to pump him full of soul energy?

  Riker knew what all this meant. He was going to have to do the heavy lifting for Maddox. He was going to have to stand before a puzzle that probably only a di-far could solve. That’s what had Riker so angry, so moody. He didn’t mind risking his old hide to help save the young’un. What he didn’t want to do was fail the young pup. If saving everything was up to old Sergeant Riker…

  “All right, all right,” he told himself. “Let’s not get worked up over this. Let’s concentrate and do this right.”

  Keith should be here piloting the darter, but Keith was Victory’s ace. Lieutenant Noonan had made the correct decision in keeping the ace aboard the starship. She could not jeopardize the starship or the greater mission even for Captain Maddox.

  Riker peered out of the polarized window. The planet looked sandy, a desert world of red and yellow sand and rock. There… Riker squinted, leaning forward. It looked like light, a ball of light, darted upward from the surface. The ball of light headed this way.

  What could that mean?

  The com squawked before he could decide.

  “Now what?” Riker muttered. He reached over and tapped a pad.

  “You’re nearing the upper atmosphere,” Keith said from Victory. “You have to slow down and activate the repulsors. If you don’t, the darter is going to scream through the atmosphere like a comet, and you’ll all burn up.”

  “Oh,” Riker said, seeing a blinking light on the pilot board. He’d been daydreaming instead of paying attention. He could fly flitters—and had been a glorified chauffer for Maddox on more than one occasion—but this was a spacecraft, an expensive and tricky one at that.

  “Sergeant!” Keith said.

  “Right, I see it,” Riker muttered, tapping the board.

  “I can’t stick around and nurse-maid you down to the surface,” Keith said. “Do you have this or not?”

  “I’m going to whip your butt once I get back.”

  “Sure, old-timer, I’ll be waiting. Just make sure you make it.”

  Keith sighed over the com. Several seconds later, the starship vanished as it used its star-drive jump to bypass the mines and exit the system.

  Riker gulped, and he scowled, concentrating, trying to remember everything about bringing a shuttle down through an atmosphere. If he screwed up this one, Maddox and Meta were dead. He couldn’t live with himself if he let that happen. Of course, he’d be dead then, too. So—

  “Concentrate,” Riker hissed at himself. “Get this right, you old coot.”

  ***

  The darter skipped and slid through the upper atmosphere because it came down too fast and the repulsors were at too weak a setting. A warning alarm rang in the cabin as the Reynard threatened to skip like a flat stone across the upper atmosphere and bounce back into space. If that happened—

  Riker glanced at a tiny screen showing several lurker missiles already heading his way. The darter had to get under the atmosphere for its own protection.

  Riker manipulated the pilot board as best he could—

  The hatch slid up and Maddox staggered into the cabin. Meta screamed from behind in the corridor.

  Riker turned around, staring at the captain, and it felt as if someone punched Riker in the stomach. The captain’s eyes glowed. It was not an expression or a metaphor; they glowed as if someone had snapped on arc lamps behind his eyes.

  Meta raced up, and there was a welt on her right cheek. “He hit me,” she shouted.

  “The captain?” Riker asked, dumbfounded.

  “Something just floated through the bulkhead and into him,” Meta shouted, sounding hysterical.

  “What do you mean, like a glowing space ball?” asked Riker, recalling the ball of light he’d seen earlier.

  “Yes, yes,” Meta shouted. “It’s in Maddox. This is a hell planet. We have to get out of here. The thing is like a demon. It’s in him, and it took over. He’s a hybrid now.”

  Riker looked up a
t Maddox working toward him. The captain’s eyes glowed, but there was a maniacal twist to the young man’s face that Riker had never seen before. It was evil.

  The captain opened his mouth, and weird chuckles that froze Riker boomed as if from the captain’s gut.

  “We have to restrain him,” Meta shouted. “But he’s gotten a lot stronger, so it’s not going to be easy.”

  Riker unbuckled as a horrible taste welled up in his mouth. A piece of a Ska had once attached to his bionic hand. He still had nightmares about that sometimes. Now, this—Riker swallowed. He never would have had the time to get up, but this Maddox wove and stumbled as he headed his way. It was as if the thing in Maddox didn’t know yet exactly how to steer a human body.

  “You fiend,” Riker shouted.

  Meta and Riker converged upon Maddox. The hybrid whirled around, swinging at Meta. She was faster, ducked under the blow, and leaped closer, wrestling with the one arm.

  Riker moved in, grabbing the other arm, using his bionic strength to force the arm behind the captain’s back.

  The darter bucked across the atmosphere, and it indeed skipped, shaking the darter, heading back for space.

  The three stumbled, but Meta and Riker held onto the captain’s arms.

  “We have to get him in one of those stasis tubes!” Meta shouted.

  Again, the booming, alien laugh echoed out of the captain’s open mouth.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” Riker panted.

  “Maddox lives or dies by our efforts,” Meta said, her eyes wild but determined.

  Riker gritted his teeth. Meta grunted, struggling mightily to contain her husband’s body.

  -8-

  Maddox was all too aware of the thing inside his body. He knew it had caused him to strike his wife. Until that moment, he had been too weak to even complain to the…what was the thing inside him called?

  Erill.

  “What?” Maddox asked, even though he did not say that aloud, but in the citadel of his id.

  I am Erill.

  “Is that your species name or your own name?”

  Vain creature, you know nothing.

  The communication between them did something to the identity of Maddox. What was a person? Was it his mind? Was it his body? Was there something else that was a soul that could exist after death apart from the body? Maddox didn’t have the answer to that. All he knew was that his consciousness expanded as the Erill or Erill in him spoke to his being directly. In that moment, Maddox became aware of a vast conspiracy down on the planet.

  It wasn’t the whole planet, just the one location on the surface. Maddox could sense in that moment with something other than sight, sound or other normal perceptions. He saw on a different plane. Yet he realized there was an ancient physical city down there. It consisted of gigantic pyramids constructed of vast stones cunningly fit together. The city of pyramids was far older than Galyan had let on. Yes, the AI had said this place was ancient even during the time of the Adoks. The place was haunted—

  That wasn’t exactly right, but to Maddox the sense of the meaning was “haunted.” The thing—the Erill—in him wasn’t a demon, a fallen angel from a heavenly pantheon, but an alien entity akin in ways to the Ska.

  I am not Ska, the Erill told Maddox.

  The captain understood two things. The Erill knew about Ska, and the Erill was not a Ska as it had communicated. But the Erill was like a Ska in that it did not originate in this universe. It came from a different plane of existence or reality.

  The people of this planet—not even the Erill remembered their name or physical shape, it had been so long ago—had delved into strange sciences. They had opened the tiniest of gateways into another plane of existence. The breach had threatened this realm in ways neither the Erill nor Maddox understood. At some point, a host of Erill came through the opening, and they devoured the aliens here on this side. They consumed the aliens from within, and afterward became a planet of ghosts. Not real ghosts as spirit things from the bodies of living entities, but alien creatures fashioned on different principles than the creatures of this realm of existence.

  Afterward, a Builder—

  The Erill in Maddox screamed internally, hating the Builders above all others.

  Maddox caught a flash from the entity’s consciousness. In that moment, he understood. A Builder had investigated long ago, and the Builder had died most gruesomely. But it had sent a message to other Builders. Those Builders logically inferred what had happened, and they must have realized that this planet must be quarantined…forever. The Builders had also shut the gate to the other realm.

  Not forever, the Erill said. Few of us are left. Even we extinguish in time. But now, I will live long. I will use you material beings to forge a new gate to my realm. Many will come and feast on you physical things.

  In the citadel of his id, Maddox closed his eyes wearily. He realized now why Galyan had sent him to this place. He was the di-far. He had to deal with yet another issue that could consume humanity. This was a latent threat, but it was out here in a region of space where mankind would eventually grow, provided humanity lasted long enough.

  The Erill mocked him. You can do nothing. You are weak. Your will is small. Soon, I will own this flesh. Then, I will consume. Then, I will use many, many beings, beginning with Ri-ker and Me-ta.

  Maddox recognized his ineffectual state, and understood that he wasn’t even strong enough to open his body’s eyes. The Erill had taken over his body. Soon, it would devour his mind, and then power itself from his soul. Was that possible?

  “I am Captain Maddox. I am the di-far. I can change the course of history. There must be something I can do.”

  You can do nothing but wail in defeat and cease existence. It is your lot.

  Maddox refused to accept that. He’d faced a Builder before. That had been on the Dyson Sphere. Could the Builder have foreseen his conflict with the Erill? The Builder and Maddox had fought on a strange level, with Galyan wired to meet the Builder in a way they could defeat it. Yet, the Builders had fashioned the Methuselah Men. One Builder had installed a deep memory in Ludendorff, and due to that, the professor had created a weapon that had helped to defeat a Ska.

  I am not Ska. I am an Erill. I am greater and wiser.

  Maddox rejected the idea. He searched his memories. He sought to remember the day he had faced the Builder of the Dyson Sphere. It had been an ancient creature. Clearly, Builders had fought for life for millennia. They almost seemed like an older-brother type of alien life that helped the younger races.

  “I must be missing something.”

  Only the good sense to die in despair, the Erill told him. I’m weary of your banter. I have better things to do.

  Maddox caught a glimpse of what those ‘better’ things were. The Erill physically fought Meta and Riker, and in some way, Maddox’s thoughts made it harder on the Erill to coordinate the captain’s body.

  That encouraged Maddox. He sought—

  Suddenly, his memory exploded with his and Galyan’s fight against the Builder. They had sought to extinguish the Builder. It had fought back, and it had also…it had also…

  Maddox had the odd sensation that the Builder had tried to tell him something back then. It had struggled to implant a thought, a way—

  Cease this, the Erill said. If you will not—

  “I won’t,” Maddox said. “I’ll resist you until I’m dead.”

  Then you have sealed your fate, human. It is time for you to die!

  -9-

  Maddox sensed the Erill turning back against him. The entity had been attempting to force his body to do something critical—

  The body had fought Meta and Riker. His wife and friend now slammed his body onto the floor, turning him onto his stomach. They hogtied him. He’d been trying to overpower them in order to bring the darter down into the howling city of pyramids. There—

  Maddox’s perceptions abruptly changed. He stood—in his id he did, anyway—on a spongy
substance like the flooring in an alien Destroyer. This flooring, however, had fern-like trees towering around them.

  Them?

  Maddox was wearing a Star Watch uniform, and he faced a great shambling creature that seemed almost all head and teeth. It was a horror monster, with enough appendages on the bottom to move and beady little eyes that tracked him whichever way he moved.

  “You’re an Erill?” Maddox’s id asked.

  I am your conception of an Erill.

  “Then what are you really?”

  Your Master and Devourer, the Erill told him.

  Maddox scowled.

  As he did, the head and teeth monster transformed into a long serpent-like creature. It was a great python with black eyes like drips of oil. The python did not crawl toward him, though. It shot off the spongy ground and flew at him through the air.

  The Erill attempted to wind around Maddox like an Earthly python.

  Maddox threw himself onto the spongy ground, ducking the attack.

  The great Erill python floated away, halting its flight and slowly turning. That seemed to take time and—not mental effort, but a different kind of effort.

  To Maddox’s horror, he happened to glance at his right hand. It was transparent. He could not understand why.

  I am draining you of life essence.

  “I don’t feel the drain.”

  No, you ignoramus. You are devouring the last of your life essence or soul energy fighting me. I don’t have to eat you. I merely need tire you enough until your will vanishes just like your body here is disappearing.

  There seemed to be logic to the idea. Maddox accepted the dream logic, and he understood the Erill’s strategy.

  Do you really? the Erill asked. Then stop fighting me.

  “And let you devour me? No, I don’t think so.”

  You are doomed, O man. You are mine. Then, your wife and—

  Maddox scowled as a thought struck him. Was this sudden idea from the Builder of old? The captain stared at his hand, and he imagined it long and sharp as a sword. Even though his hand and now arm were almost transparent, they lengthened and seemed to turn into a translucent steely substance.